Tag Archives: environment

As a 1950s kid in Portales, New Mexico, the barber shops always had a bunch of old guys sitting around educating one another [and me] about how many Germans they killed personally during the Big War [WWI], along with how bad chlorine and mustard gas stuck in the gullet.

That’s where I also learned [before Sputnik 1 put that one to sleep] how the Good Lord wasn’t going to let men put anything into orbit around the earth. How the Bible proved it by the way He destroyed Babylon and made everyone speak different languages. You don’t hear a lot of that stuff anymore.

But another thing a kid heard a lot in those days was, “My granddaddy fought the Indians for this land. I’m damned if I’m going to let [fill in the blank] do thus and so.” Sometimes it was the Federal Government, sometimes the Communists, sometimes it was some potential foreign aggressor he wasn’t going to let get by with it.

A lot of their grandaddies also fought the Yankees for this land, but nevermind.

For most purposes those old guys didn’t find it convenient to mention a lot of their granddaddy’s fathers also fought the Mexicans for that land and took it away from them at the point of a gun. Pretty much everything from Texas to California with a few other places thrown in for good measure.

That’s a fair synopsis of how immigration works. Our ancestors came in and took it away from anyone who stood in the way of them. If someone tried to stop them they dragged them out of their houses and killed them, burned the houses down and stole their livestock. Just the way the Hebrews did to the folks who tried to keep them from stealing their lands in the Bible. Just the way they’re still doing it to their neighbors in Palestine.

For a longish time when North America needed white people to fight the Indians, and fight the Mexicans. Live in hovels to scratch out bare livings on hardscrabble farms, coal mines, log forests, sweatshops making textiles, steel, tools, clothing, kitchen appliances, build railroads, immigration was groovy. They Statue of Libertied the concept.

Nobody’d figured out yet you could just send the jobs to the pestholes those people were coming from and import their products without having to put up with the people. Everyone could stay here, close the borders and sell hamburgers and insurance policies back and forth to one another or be cops and firemen.

So now it’s only the damned immigrants of earlier generations someone’s going to have to figure out what they can do about. Sure, a few sneak across the borders still, and a lot of Asians get let in because we need people who can read and write and cypher. But all in all the immigrants causing all the trouble in the US today are the ones who got here sometime before WWII.

It’s obvious that all those plastics partially digested by Mother Earth in the stomach of her ocean have been belched into outer space moving hastily enough to reach Titan and create drifting dunes. Before Cassini arrived.

Which means NASA will be spending a lot of time in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch placing hopeful spacecraft in the way of earth belches. The NASA budget cuts and ending most government funded space ventures makes earth belches the only practical means of sending anything of US origins into outer space.

But of course there’s another alternative explanation for those dunes of drifting plastic on Titan. It’s the one the government doesn’t want you to know about because it confirms the existence of the Dreaded Green Men. A whole civilization of them beginning, climbing to the top of their food chain, inventing plastics, and creating ocean garbage patches of their own.

Yeah, you read that right. The reason those damned Titanians came to earth and crashed at Corona, New Mexico in 1947 was that they were looking for some empty space in the solar system where they could dump their damned plastics.

Hell, who do you think came up with the idea of selling water in bottles for a dollar each? That idea didn’t originate on a planet 2/3 covered with water. The entrepreneurs and engineers on earth reverse-engineered the whole concept from the Roswell UFO crash. Along with memory metal frames for eyeglasses.

I finally just said, “To hell with it.” Ordered something called Oxygen Boost in a can. 60 deep breaths per can. Even though it doesn’t make a lot of sense, the oxygen-concentrating machine I used when I stayed at Eddie Brewer’s place last year seemed to help a lot. Several times when I was in the midst of seemingly major events it brought them to an immediate halt.

The past few days around here, maybe because of the Orange Ozone Alert, have me thinking it’s time to give O2 another try, despite the fact the various sawbones haven’t seen fit to prescribe it. I haven’t been able to exercise for several days, which they did prescribe.

Anyway, if these 60 breath cans of 02 get the job done I’ll be back banging on the door of the VA over in KC Missouri threatening to scream and hold my breath if they can’t bring themselves to prescribe something to fill in during those moments when Mother Earth just isn’t enough.

After all, is it not written, “You veterans are responsible for keeping us free! You brave guys deserve the absolute best for killing all those brown people who wanted to take away our freedoms! And while a lot of people can breathe easier because of all the freedoms you protected, if you breathe hard we can afford a bit of oxygen to help you along?” Ahem. You believe the bullshit comes out of the mouths of patriots?

Well, I’m truly moved, though I din’t kill any brown people who were trying to take away our freedom. Got into a few fights with some in bars but nobody got hurt too badly. Bastards trying to steal our freedoms.

And I’d breathe more easily if someone over at the VA fixed me up with the freedom to breath when the going gets tough.

Is it not written, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going?”

I ain’t going anywhere without being able to, including all the usual mobility abilities.

Hi readers. Everywhere people gather with no television playing and no cell phone calls to attend to the US citizenry conversations eventually get around to fracking. Drilling oil and gas wells horizontally into shale and fracturing the deposition to release energy producing minerals.

Heck, I’d never heard of it until a couple of years ago, when my neighbor began telling me about the amazing oil discoveries in Texas now reaching production. Oil reserves larger than the combined deposits everywhere else on the planet.

At first I was skeptical, and I couldn’t imagine what fracking was. But one thing I discovered immediately was the fact everyone who knew the word was possessed of a certainty about whether it was a dangerous risk to one or another environmental facet.

When I visited Eddie Brewer in Andrews, Texas while waiting for the VA to try figuring out what manner of health problems I’d given myself I found he’d educated himself about it. A neighbor was drilling a number of wells so’s to sell water to drilling companies for use in fracking. And Eddie was concerned about depletion of his household water well.

It was through Eddie I first became fundamentally acquainted with what’s involved. And with him I watched a number of television documentaries on the subject of fracking and groundwater contamination. I didn’t come away with a deep understanding of the risks, and I doubt anyone actually can lay claim to a thorough understanding of those. But at least I was able to comprehend the basics.

And gradually became cognizant of how much BS was coming from the mouths of people who didn’t understand those basics in the form of almost religious opinion, either for, or against fracking.

So, even though I don’t have a good reason for doing so beyond curiosity, I recently decided to devote some time to learning about it. Just enough to decide whether I’d have an opinion if I were smarter and better informed than I am. I started by watching two movies currently streaming on Netflix: Gasland, and FrackNation. What would appear at first glance to be a way of getting both sides of the viewpoints.

Unfortunately, Gasland turns out to be a fraud. Which doesn’t mean a strong stand opposing fracking mightn’t be valid. All it means is that Gasland was a deliberate nest of lies and misrepresentations intended to propagandize unfavorably about fracking.

However, here are some other videos giving both sides of the subject. I’ve watched them carefully and learned a lot. But I still can’t figure out whether I have an opinion. Or, if I have an opinion, what it might be. I’ve graduated from not having an opinion out of total ignorance, to not having an opinion knowing a good bit more, and being more acutely aware of how much a person with an opinion ought to know. Which most of us don’t.

Hi readers. Wil pointed out in a comment that the guy in the White House mightn’t have known yet whether a plane went down when he made his might be a terrible tragedy statement. I’ve been re-thinking the post and I hope Wil is wrong.

Maybe Wossname, the guy in the White House was demonstrating an uncharacteristic, Zen-like wisdom. Maybe he was trying to exert some of the world leadership thing presidents are occasionally accused of, albeit wrongly accused.

Fact is, that airplane actually mightn’t be a terrible tragedy because someone the CIA or such had on a list of suspects of being terrorists. In which case everyone else on the airplane was just part of the price of fighting terrorism. Maybe the prez didn’t want to stick his foot in his mouth and be forever harangued about it until all the authorities went over the passenger list carefully.

It’s an ill wind that blows no good, any way you cut it. While it’s tempting to think Wossname wanted to make certain someone he’d personally like to see dead was on the plane, or that someone he had to make a public display NOT being glad as hell, the crash was certainly a secret blessing to some peoople.

People can accurately be described as a pain in the ass to other people. All of us. If one of the passengers was the guy next door to someone and had a dog that barked all night, he neighbor would consider the prez a fool, or a liar if Wossname proclaimed it a terrible tragedy. And so on 295 times. Plus or minus the airline crew. Lots of people collecting flight insurance, losing troublesome mothers-in-law, competing people on the career trail, it all reduces the equation when attempting to determine whether there was a whiff of good in the ill wind.

And Wossname!, the guy in the White House, might have recognized this!

Maybe.

In any case, we might as well be ecstatic because now we can make up our own minds whether anyone on the airplane needed killing more than the rest of the people aboard needed to keep living.

Welcome

I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.